Credibility question

Two Springfield Police Department detectives
who tried to solve a decade-old homicide now stand accused of
perjury, concealing reports, and witness intimidation.

The allegations involve the detectives’
investigation into the murder of 19-year-old Tonia Smith, killed on
New Year’s Day 1994. The murder was shelved as a “cold
case” until about 1999, when it was resurrected by Detectives
Paul Carpenter and Jim Graham. Their investigation eventually led
to first-degree murder charges against Anthony Grimm, who was tried
and acquitted in November.

The misconduct accusations come from private
investigator Bill Clutter, who worked for Grimm’s defense
team. In a letter dated Feb. 14, Clutter accuses Graham and
Carpenter of withholding reports of interviews with witnesses
favorable to the defense and of intimidating a young witness who
planned to testify for the defense.

Clutter sent a five-page letter with
supporting documents to Ward 2 Ald. Frank McNeil, who sponsored an
ordinance recently approved by City Council establishing a Citizen
Police Review Commission. McNeil wouldn’t comment on the
details of the accusations, but said he hoped to discuss the matter
with Police Chief Don Kliment, who was sent a copy of the letter.

“I’m going to be meeting with the
chief to discuss what action is being taken and what form of investigation is going to be taking place
because clearly, after reading the letter, there seems to be some
egregious conduct on the part of the two officers in question,”
McNeil says.

Kliment declined to comment, citing
SPD’s policy against discussing ongoing investigations.
However, one veteran investigator in the detectives’ chain of
command, speaking on the condition that he remain anonymous, says
Carpenter and Graham are excellent officers with a reputation for
working hard to solve crimes.

Clutter apparently wrote the letter after
being contacted by Lt. Craig Sims of SPD’s internal affairs
office, concerning an investigation of Sgt. Bob Oney. Oney, who had
been involved in the original homicide investigation, was
subpoenaed by the defense and testified briefly at Grimm’s
trial.

“In my 20-year career as a defense
investigator, I have interviewed many police officers,”
Clutter wrote. “None have ever been subjected to an internal
affairs investigation until now.”

Although he doesn’t specify why Oney
was being investigated and possibly does not know (SPD has a policy
against discussing disciplinary matters), Clutter wrote that Oney
was being made a scapegoat, and that Carpenter and Graham should be
investigated instead.

Clutter then recounted several instances in
which the detectives interviewed witnesses without disclosing those interviews to the defense
team, and of the detectives’ efforts to shape the testimony of
other witnesses.

For example, the detectives and the
state’s attorney’s office offered Ralph Chamberlin, who
had been a roommate in the same house as Grimm, full immunity to
testify against Grimm. He refused, and appeared in court at
Grimm’s trial dressed in striped jail attire, having been
arrested and jailed on an unrelated theft charge. His statement to
Clutter, attached to the letter, says Carpenter and Graham
interrogated him for more than four hours in an effort to have him
to implicate Grimm. Instead, Chamberlin’s testimony supported
Grimm’s version of events.

Clutter’s charge of perjury is
apparently based on the detectives’ interview with
Grimm’s other roommate, Curtis Bradford. Bradford was
interviewed by detectives in August 2002, yet no report or
statement was produced. According to Clutter’s letter, Graham
first testified that he had made no report of the interview. He
later said he had made a report, and that it was in the courtroom
in his “personal folder.” Attorneys then leafed through
the folder and found that report along with a report that
discredited a witness who had testified for the prosecution,
neither of which had been disclosed. Graham testified that he
believed the reports had been filed in the records department and produced
along with all other documents.

Judge Leo Zappa ruled that the omission of
the reports was done without malice and did not harm either side.

Perhaps the most serious charge in
Clutter’s letter involves Carpenter and Graham’s
interview of Dylan Davis, a witness who was 14 years old at the time of the crime. The defense subpoenaed
Davis, now 25, because he had told police in 1994 that he had
seen Smith abducted by three neighborhood residents he knew as Sleepy,
Bushwick and Antonio. Clutter’s letter describes Davis as
“a reluctant witness who was concerned about his safety”;
Davis is also known to have some developmental delays.

On the second day of the trial, Davis was
brought to the office of Chad Turner, the then-assistant
state’s attorney assigned to prosecute Grimm (Turner has
since resigned). Clutter’s letter erroneously stated that
police arrested Davis; Turner says he sent his own investigator to
bring Davis in for an interview, but that he would have issued a
warrant if Davis had not agreed to come in.

While Davis was in Turner’s office, the
detectives came in and told the witness that they had informed
Sleepy, Bushwick and Antonio about his planned testimony, and that
the three men could even be present in the courtroom while he was
on the witness stand.

Clutter and Turner also have slightly
different interpretations of that conversation. Clutter describes
it as a tactic “designed to intimidate the witness from
testifying for the defense.”

Turner, while confirming the general content
of conversation, says the detectives were simply trying to persuade
Davis to stop changing his story. The detectives had previously
interviewed Davis, and he had told them his 1994 statement was
false, Turner says. When they learned Davis had told Clutter his
original version, and that he planned to repeat that story on the
stand, they wanted to warn Davis about perjury.

“There was a confrontation between him
and some of the officers related to things that were not
true,” Turner says. “It was basically Carpenter saying,
‘Dylan, that’s not what you told us before . . . This is the third time you’ve changed your
story.' "

Turner says Davis became upset and began
using profanity, but that Carpenter conducted himself in a
professional manner throughout the interview.

“I don’t believe he ever crossed
the line,” Turner says. “Anybody who is trying to claim
that Carpenter crossed the line in terms of pressuring a witness is
simply wrong. We had a young man who was about to perjure himself
and who in fact did perjure himself, and we let him know he was
assisting in letting a murderer walk free.”

He says Clutter was not present, and must be
basing his letter on Davis’s account, calling it a case of
“someone who has very, very little credibility,”
meaning Clutter, relying on the word of “someone who has zero
credibility,” meaning Davis.

Clutter, who initially declined to comment,
says he finds something interesting about Turner’s version.
“If those detectives had previously interviewed Dylan,”
he says, “why didn’t we get a report of that
interview?”